


Bad Days and Brownies

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: BFF Bev, Established Relationship, M/M, Phone Sex, fluffiest of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:46:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3203057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Classmate, rival, occasional bedmate -"</i>
</p>
<p>  <i>"Emphasis on occasional," responds Bev with a smirk, prodding one of the cupcakes with a toothpick. "Where's your occasional?"</i></p>
<p>  <i>“Probably studying,” Will ventures.</i></p>
<p>A fluffy little Brownham for the lovely <a href="http://harpsichordian.tumblr.com/">harpsichordian</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Days and Brownies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syracuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syracuse/gifts).



Will doesn’t mean to slam the door quite so hard, but he did slam it, and finds it as minimally satisfying as he might have expected.

Wincing at the bang that bursts the relative quiet of the apartment, he mumbles a half-hearted apology to the empty living room. It doesn’t travel, and certainly not over the music playing loudly from the kitchen, with his voice muffled behind the enormous scarf that he unloops from around his neck. Tossing it to the couch without much mind for the snow that will soon melt from it, Will ducks to unlace his boots, startling a little when Bev peeks from around the door to the kitchen.

“Why don’t you scare the hell out of me, Graham?”

“Just did,” he replies, unable even to muster a grin as he steps out of his shoes and kicks them back towards the door.

The apartment - however small and untidy - is warm despite the bitter chill that frosts the windows. Shaking the snow from his hair, Will follows after Bev as she disappears back into the kitchen, towards the blazing oven that heats the apartment so pleasantly, and fills it with particularly wonderful smells.

“Not a bad thing to come home to,” Will murmurs, leaning against the doorway.

Bev laughs, a single almost barking sound before grinning and making her way through the labyrinth of trays and cooling racks with… everything on them. He can see brownies on the counter, cookies of some variety on a stepladder just by the oven. Something’s in the oven as well, and Will would bet that there’s something in the fridge, either no-bake bars again, or dough waiting to be used.

At least that constant’s still there, Bev and her victory baking.

The rest of the kitchen is covered in flour, patches of cocoa and scattered nuts and oats. Once the whirlwind of joy has passed and ebbed away, the kitchen will return to its somewhat pristine appearance with only three dishes in the sink constantly, and perhaps one set of cutlery that is clean.

“Grats?” Will offers, brows up to regard Bev where she’s mixing yet another something over a water bath on the stove.

Her grin is quick, ferociously pleased with herself as she offers out a damp, flour-sticky hand in the air. “Got into the lab,” she announces. “Grades weren’t an issue -”

“Never are,” Will responds, lifting a hand to decline her request for a high-five.

She squints at him a moment more, before the grin returns and she goes back to her work. “It’s just an internship but they’re impossible to get, and once you’re in, you’re in. That’s what everyone says anyway - they hire internally so once you’ve got your foot in the door, it stays there.”

“Just your foot?”

Bev rolls her eyes at the weak joke, and Will feels a smile tug at the corner of his lips. “As long as they like me, anyway.”

“Bring in all this on your first day, and they’ll keep you around for that alone,” Will muses. Flicking water at him in retribution, Will ducks behind his arm before folding both onto the counter to watch her work, a quiet distraction. “You’ll do great. You’re smart as hell and you actually do work - more than most of the people in our class.”

“And I find dead people cool.”

“And you find dead people cool,” Will agrees with a snort, tilting his head and just staring as she sets the pot aside, takes up the glass bowl that had rested within it and whisks the chocolate quickly before drizzling it over the brownies and cookies both.

“So what the hell is up with you?” she asks, Will raises an eyebrow, resting in such a way that only his eyes and nose are visible, sweatered arm covering his mouth and floppy hair the rest.

“What would be up with me?”

“Door-slamming, no immediate beeline for the brownies on the counter, you actually watching me cook? Might not be a profiler like you but I’m sharp enough.”

Will hums, burrows deeper into his folded arms with a hum. “You’re not a profiler like me,” he sighs. “I’m not a profiler like me…”

A pause, long enough to be significant, in a house that rarely stops moving, and Bev sets the bowl into the sink, sucking a stray drop of chocolate from her thumb before folding her arms.

“Shit.”

“Unstable,” Will repeats the word, clicking the consonants before glaring at the counter as though it had failed him. “The psych eval does not deem me competent in the field, so I am back to my good grades and fuck all else.”

Bev makes a sound, leans to get the cookies from the step ladder and holds them out. Will just raises his eyes from them to her.

“This isn’t the fucking Matrix,” he says, but she can hear the smile in his voice even as he hides it. A moment later, and Will reaches for a cookie with a sigh. He sets it in his mouth and lets it remain there until it disintegrates enough that he has to remove the other half of it, chewing dourly.

“They’re good.”

“I know,” she answers, hands on her hips as she surveys the damage done with a look of approval, letting the oven do its thing and turning towards Will. She folds her arms as he does, though doesn’t slouch so much, stretching instead as she watches him, the circles dark beneath his eyes, the weight on his shoulders. “They actually said that?”

“I wasn’t supposed to see the results,” murmurs Will around another bite of cookie. “Just know if I’d be moving on in the process or not. When they told me I wasn’t, I asked to see the results. They said no.”

“And?”

“And so I told them I’d walk across the street and FOIA them for it,” he mutters, a faint grin at this at least, but it quickly fades. “They didn’t think that was very funny, but they let me see the file.”

“Shit.”

“I mean, yes,” agrees Will, dropping onto the stool beside the little center island and propping his elbows on it to rub his face, glasses quickly tossed aside. “Shit. Yes, it is.” A sigh, and he sits back, letting his hands fall into his lap. “But better to know now how fucked up I am than have me out there destabilizing crime scenes.”

“Yeah, like they’re stable already,” Bev snorts. It doesn’t earn a smile but Will does release some tension from his shoulders with a sigh. “We’ll you’re not totally fucked,” she tells him, Will just levels her with another look of utter self-pity that earns a second cookie, eaten with a little more enthusiasm. “You could teach.”

“I don’t want to fucking teach. Those who can’t, teach.”

Bev sits up to gently smack him upside the head. “Like you think that of the lecturers here. You hero worship, you went to every single lecture, even with hangovers, and I know how many of those there are when you don’t coincide with Matt’s vacations and he stays over anyway.”

“A lot.”

“A lot.” Bev sits closer again. “Look, Graham, you know the material inside out, you know the cases, you know the work. You’ll probably write a freaking book some day that will end up being in the curriculum. I know you wanted the field, and it sucks, but those in the field wouldn’t even be in it if it weren’t for the teachers that got ‘em there.”

“In their cozy safe classrooms, away from the actual real discovery of it,” Will responds, shaking his head. “Analyzing someone else’s research, someone else’s work, parroting it back with new theories that don’t actually do anything directly.” He sighs, long, to stop himself from the endless angst that’s laden him throughout the day, and pushes a hand back through his hair. “I just -”

Bev arches a brow, somehow sympathetic and slightly warning all at once.

“I wish it was something I had control over,” he says, finally, the heart of the matter. “My grades, because I didn’t study enough. My lab work, because I wasn’t consistent enough. My physicals, because I didn’t run enough. Not this, not because I’m not sane enough.”

For a moment, Bev says nothing, knows Will too well to not push when he’s like this. Since high school, he’s been like this. Always in and out of counselling, always up till the ungodly hours studying or reading or bettering, to see if he could make the stuff in his mind go away. But never once, not in the years they’ve been friends, roommates, classmates, has Will seemed unstable. Never in his life or action has he been wrong.

“Take control of it,” she tells him, raises an eyebrow when he tries to complain again. “Get the reports before they’re put up, take the lab ones, hell, I can volley them to you. Make your theories, don’t regurgitate others’. You’re smart as hell, and if they find that unstable then screw them, and use it for something else. Become the invaluable consultant that, hell, Jack Crawford will pull to the field, stable or not stable.”

“Jack Crawford doesn’t care about lecturers.”

“He cares about profilers that do their job,” Bev tells him. “So do your job, do it well, and the field can wait for you to stomp all over it when invited.”

Bev is wonderfully difficult to argue with when she's so certain, steadfast not only in their friendship but in her convictions. And so Will doesn't try, instead taking comfort in her advice rather than in the doubts that pervade him still. A ceaseless negativity - that he's unwell, that his hard work has been for nothing, that try as he might his fate is held in the hands of others - muffled only by Bev, and the third cookie that Will stuffs into his mouth.

"Lucky you already passed your physical. You'd bomb that for sure at this rate," she snorts, chasing it with a grin that Will finally returns in earnest.

"Congrats on the apprenticeship," he tells her, pleased that he hasn't dampened her spirits down along with his own. "Careful your big head doesn't get stuck in the door on the way in."

"There's the Grumpy Graham we all know and tolerate," teases Bev. With a flourish of glossy hair, she turns back to catch the oven just as it beeps, sliding out a tray of cupcakes. "Brian got in too," she adds, and Will snorts before she can continue attempting to sound casual about it. "What? I can't be excited for a classmate?"

"Classmate, rival, occasional bedmate -"

"Emphasis on occasional," responds Bev with a smirk, prodding one of the cupcakes with a toothpick. "Where's your occasional?"

“Probably studying,” Will ventures, smiles when Bev tilts her head and licks the toothpick clean, tossing it in the trash. “Probably should be studying and isn’t. His finals aren’t far off of ours and I hate that his holidays are longer.”

A hum of agreement and Bev sets the cupcakes on top of the stove to cool before she pulls them from the tray.

“Don’t touch those.” Bev gestures with her elbow, at the brownies. “They genuinely have a home to go to and it’s not your stomach. And I’ve counted them. So eat the cookies.”

“Where are you going?”

“Library,” Bev says, eyes up before nodding and returning them to Will, snaring a hair tie where she had tossed it to the table and twisting her hair into a spiny bun. Will blinks.

“Why?”

“Honestly?” Will nods, Bev shrugs. “First place I thought of where I could be out of earshot of you and your boy getting it on over the phone.”

“It’s on the other side of campus,” Will murmurs, brows drawn in concern that is only partially false.

“Exactly. Don’t eat those.”

“I remember, Christ.”

“I’ll still come home and find one gone, I know you.” Bev brushes past him with a grin and takes up the scarf he had dropped to wind around her own neck instead. “I’ll do groceries tonight as well, I used enough and we won’t survive on baked goods for a week. I’ll be late.”

Will just nods, watches her slip into her bulky jacket that makes her appear entirely tinier than she is, don her boots and salute him out the door. For a while he just sits, stomach filled with fresh and soft cookies, and mind craving the brownies he knows Bev made extra of just for him. He resists, for the moment, and instead pushes himself to stand, taking up his phone to message a familiar number.

I should just sell the house and move to the country with seven dogs.

Cradling the phone in his hand, still alight, Will checks that the oven is off and makes his way back to his bedroom, clicking on the light beside his bed. Unmade as ever, he stuffs a pillow beneath his head and glances down as the phone illuminates brighter.

Why seven?

He’s glad for the response so quickly, and can’t resist a slight smile, however tinged with bitterness he knows it must be. Fingers brush quick across the letters in response.

Because eight would be crazy.

The clock - an antiquated thing with actual hands, rather than a digital glow to further keep him up at night - ticks away a minute, two, before the phone buzzes again, and Will flicks his thumb across it to answer.

“Giving up a life of chasing crime to chase fleas instead?”

Will feels his smile widen despite himself, and turns to lay on his side, arms looped over his middle and phone held between his ear and the bunched-up pillow. “Something like that.”

“What’s up?” Matt asks, no casual small-talk in the question but a genuine inquiry.

“Did you know you’re dating an unstable person?”

“Are we dating?”

“Shut up,” sighs Will, and it earns a deep chuckle from Matt. It’s been nearly two semesters since they met, a conversation in passing as Will’s class was brought in to the medical examiner’s office, a small side-building attached to the enormous hospital where Matt has been working, on top of his study for nurse’s certification. Their eyes met, Will’s brow arched and Matt grinned crooked at him, and each delayed in their intended tasks to exchange playful jabs in the stark white hallway, before finally exchanging phone numbers.

An unexpected thing, but so are they both, Will figures.

“Why are you unstable?” asks Matt, voice muffled by a mouthful of food.

"According to the FBI," Will replies, adjusting his position a little, "there’s just something about my mind that doesn’t sit well."

"You tried arguing on it?"

"What would I say? Besides, crazy people never think they're crazy."

A sound on the end of the line, like something being poured, before Matt’s voice returns, a little strained before it settles as he swallows properly.

"There you go, use that then. You need the crazy to catch the crazy."

"You're not helping, asshole." But Will is laughing, despite himself, happy to hear Matthew's voice today. They don’t get to see each other a lot during exam periods, and despite Matt’s insistence that he could care less for grades, he's never flunked out. Yet, anyway.

A grin is audible now, on the other end of the line. “You’re the one who texted me first - no wonder they question your judgment.”

“Still not helping.”

Matt sighs, a long vocal thing, and Will can hear the soft sound of the couch as he drops back into it. “So what can I do to help?” he asks. “Want me to talk to them?”

Will can’t help but laugh again. “What would you say?”

“Nobody who gives blowjobs like Will Graham is crazy - he’s never used his teeth once.”

“True, but unlikely to sway them.”

“Unless you show them.”

“Goddammit Matt,” grins Will in return. He’s surprised, always, by how well Matt’s personality settles against his own. Crude by all considerations, rude by many, but entirely disarming and far more clever than he ever lets on to anyone but Will.

“So what should I do to help? Name it.”

Will sighs, moves to roll onto his back, draws his knee up to sway back and forth absently, for need of movement more than anything else. He doesn’t ask Matt to come over, he could, and he knows the man would - most likely walk, as well, even in the winter - but something pushes him to take the space, and time, to take this in on his own first. Will’s teeth find his bottom lip and he chews it softly, thinking of how he genuinely misses him, how wishes he could just -

“Talk to me,” he asks gently, smile growing as his cheeks flush with an idea. “Make me lose my mind so I know I’m sane otherwise.”

He thinks of Bev, her precaution to leave the flat before Will inevitably called Matt, but it was always to avoid the gagging noises she made outside his door when she felt he was being too sweet, too sentimental for her tough Katz preference, never for this. At least, never before. 

“What would you do if you were here?” Will asks.

“Drink all your beer and annoy Bev.”

“Bev’s not here,” answers Will, in what he hopes is a tempting voice.

“Drink all your beer then.”

“Matt,” Will sighs, and the other man laughs loud.

“Okay, okay. Is this the part where I ask what you’re wearing?”

“Something like that.”

Humming in thought, Matt finally relents in his endless teasing, tone warming, deepening enough to send a shiver down Will’s limbs. “I would strip down before I got anywhere near you. Leave clothes everywhere, since it’s just us. Let you look at me from - the couch?”

“Bed.”

“From the bed,” continues Matt, taking another sip that roughens his voice a little more. “Completely bare. Nothing but my ink.”

“Because your abs are a comfort?” snorts Will, grinning as he feels his cheeks warm, his whole body grow flush.

“They’d fuckin’ better be,” Matt scoffs. “Besides, I know you like to touch them. Gently, just your fingertips, even though it tickles.”

“Because it tickles,” murmurs Will. “I like seeing you smile and try to fight it.”

“Now who’s an asshole?”

Will bites his lip on a laugh, forces his breathing to slow down as he closes his eyes and imagines Matt there, as he’d said, bare of all but his ink, muscles hard beneath skin, small scars Will has never asked about light against his hip, over his chest, one on his back…

“Then what?” he asks gently, hears a hum over the line, the sound of fabric on fabric as Matt crosses his legs where he sits, settles to talk to Will. It occurs to him that Matt had not questioned the request at all, had simply taken the silliness into stride. It makes his cheeks darken more at the thought.

“Then I’d need to strip you,” Matt replies, matter-of-fact, but voice somehow darker, a warmer purr there that makes Will smile. “Can’t have you lording clothes over me.”

Will breathes a laugh, shifts to rub a palm over his thigh slowly as Matthew continues, voice warm, melodic, and enough to raise the little hairs on the back of Will’s neck in the most pleasant way.

“Pants first,” he says. “Open enough to see how hard you are already, boxers bunching a little where you pull the fabric. Those can stay, for now, I’ll feel you wet through them before they come off.”

Will swallows, draws one leg flat against the bed, the other knee up higher as he presses his free hand between his legs with a comfortable pressure. “Yeah?”

“Down your hips,” continues Matt. “Sliding my hands around behind you to slip them off so you have to arch up off the bed to let them move. I love your ass,” he says, as Will laughs a little. “So I squeeze it when my hands pass over it. Fingernails pressing through your boxers, pulling a little just to spread you before I finally work your pants off and toss them onto the floor.”

“You’re making a mess tonight,” Will remarks, biting his lip, still sweet with sugar.

“You’ll be a mess by the time I’m done with you,” promises Matt. “Your shirt next, running my hands along your stomach. It’s so soft.”

Will huffs a little, and mutters, “Not that soft.”

“Soft enough for me to press against it, kiss it, bite a little before I shove your shirt upwards to kiss your chest instead. I pinch one nipple, not too hard, and suck the other until you make that little sound -”

In the moment, Will does, a faint little noise from deep in his throat, interrupting Matt’s words even as he says them. He can see the crooked grin in his mind when Matt murmurs, “That one.”

“Fuck.”

“Later.”

Will laughs, shifts again to gently rub against himself, enough for friction but not to bring him close. He hears a hum from Matt.

“Are you touching yourself?”

“That was kind of the point,” Will murmurs, get a laugh in reply.

“Put the phone on speaker then.”

“Why?”

“So I can hear.”

Will swallows, lets out a quick breath through his nose before setting his phone on speaker, putting it aside on the bedside table, for the moment level with his lips when he turns to it to speak again.

“What are you expecting to hear?”

“More of those little sounds of yours.” Will hears Matt take another drink, wonders if it’s water, whiskey, soda. Wonders if he’s at the table, studying, on his couch just resting. He wonders and he aches at the thought, squirming a little more in bed.

“You gotta earn those.”

“God, you’re fucking demanding tonight,” Matt sighs. “I love it.” Ice clinks against glass through the phone, a rustle of sound as he holds the phone to his ear with his shoulder. “Enough with the shirt. Off, onto the floor with the pants and socks. I want you just in your boxers, and me bare.”

“Because you didn’t wear underwear today,” grins Will.

“Never,” Matt laughs. “Makes it easier for me to press down hard against you, rocking my hips against yours, rubbing our cocks together through that thin cotton. It feels so good like this, like fuckin’ high school again, like we’re too clumsy and shy to know what to do with our hands, to stop kissing, to do anything more than just grind against each other panting.”

Another sound, a soft little moan, aches from Will’s lips and he doesn’t bother to stop it this time, palm pressed flat against the hard ridge of his length, his hips shifting forward and back.

“I slide a hand under you, the other against your pillow, next to your head, and steal another quick grab of your ass, pushing your cock even harder against mine. Controlling your speed and matching it with mine, until I feel you leaking from it, and then I touch there instead, between us. Trace the little wet spots darkening your boxers, all around the tip of your cock.” Matt pauses, his own voice a little tighter now as he purrs, “Are you doing it?”

“Yes.” Will squirms, lip between his teeth as he teases, rubs the fabric over the tip of his cock until it grows sticky with precum. “Can I pull them down?”

“Nope,” Matt laughs, and it’s warm, teasing, enough to draw a groan and a laugh from Will both. “No, you get all squirmy then, when I play with you, you wriggle and bite your lip -”

“I don’t.” Will lets his lip go, deliberately, as Matt continues.

“- it’s fucking adorable. Are you still touching?”

“Yes.” Will grins, presses his free hand to his face, feeling the blush there, feeling the way his muscles stretch to smile, to wrinkle the corners of his eyes in pleasure. He thinks of Matt, above him, tilting his head to bite behind Will’s ear and whisper what he’ll do to him when he lets him out of the last of his clothes.

“I rake my nails down your sides to watch you shiver,” Matt tells him quietly, “enough to leave red lines but no marks and you just bend, up off the bed and up into me. Spread your legs more.”

Will does, with a breathless moan.

“There you go,” Matt coaxes. “Listen to you. You act like you hate being teased but we both know you love it. Laying back and letting someone else take control, so you can just experience it without any worry of where to put your hands or when you should reciprocate. It’s beautiful to watch you, absorbing it all, fingers against your lips, between your teeth…”

Biting against his fingertips, Will’s grin widens and he pushes his shoulders back against the bed. His other hand curled around his cock, he rubs long, hard strokes against it, moaning sweetly, “Matt, please -”

A sound deeper than a hum, a soft groan of his own, as the couch squeaks beneath Matt, breath shortening just perceptibly. “I make you suck my fingers to get them wet rather than going for the lube yet. Pushing them against your tongue, watching your cheeks hollow out, eyes focused on me like they always are except when they roll shut. I spread them against your lips, rub them along your teeth, until your mouth is wet with spit and then I push them into you, through the leg of your boxers, still.”

“Just like that?” gasps Will softly.

“Just like that.”

“Can I -”

“Keep them on, Will.”

Will makes a soft pleading little noise but obeys, enough to draw his knees up his thighs wider, to slip his fingers through as Matt would have, to press against himself, gently push inside. It feels good, it always feels good, but Will didn’t imagine it could, still, just hearing Matt’s voice dictate it to him, he didn’t think he would enjoy being told so much.

“You always feel so good, so tight, every time.”

Will squirms again, toes curling, digging his heels into the bed as he pushes himself into a languid arch up and hears Matt exhale as he settles back down.

“I swear I could catalog you entirely by the fucking sounds you make, Graham.”

“Getting sentimental on me?”

“Curl your fingers.”

Will laughs, bites his lip and does, seeking, jerking when he finds the spot and shivering as he does it again, the sound he makes a strange and lilting purr that draws a similar noise from Matt through the phone.

“God, you’re fucking hot,” Matt breathes, his own voice rattled now, the movement of his body, his breath as he touches himself in kind. “I want to fuck you so hard, Will -”

Another whimper, higher now as Will presses his fingers upward, curling them again to rub steadily now, dizzy with the feel of it, belly slick where his cock has leaked against it.

“Drive you right back into the fucking headboard, make you cling to it and wrap your legs around me -”

“Please, Matt -”

“God, Will,” sighs Matt, a little breathless himself now. “I love the way you stretch around my cock, how deep you take it - how hard you take it, until you choke, gasping, like you can’t even breathe from how far inside you I am.” A rough swallow, throat clicking in the phone as Matt grins, growling, “I want you to cum in your shorts, Will.”

“Shit!” Will finds he does not need to be told twice, body responding in the most primal way to Matt’s words, to the image of him behind Will’s eyes that he still keeps closed, even as he pants, soft whimpers into the cool air of his room, finds Matt’s name on his lips again, another curse.

His entire body feels lax, spent and emptied, cum slick against his cock where his boxers prevent it from spilling over his stomach.

“Oh my god,” he laughs, with a groan, a shiver, pulls his hand free and presses the heels of both against his eyes as he laughs again, breathless and delighted. “Oh fuck, Matt.”

Hearing Will finish - hearing Will call his name when he does - is enough to push Matt over in turn, though it’s far quieter. A low grunt, another, and a groan before he goes quiet, breath shaking a little as he tries to slow it, and mutters a curse that precedes his soft, earnest laugh.

“How are you now?” Matt finally asks, sighing as the couch squeaks beneath him and he stands. Water runs a moment later and shuts off again. “Feeling stable again?”

“I dunno if I can even remember my own name,” Will mumbles, delighted and sleepy, knowing he will have to get up and shower before it gets tacky and starts to feel nasty against his skin.

“You don’t need your name, mine sounds just fine on your lips.” Will smiles, enjoying the way Matt’s drawl, always there when he’s tired, when he’s horny, when he cums, pulls the words along and settles them over his skin like a breath.

“Shut up,” he tells him. After a moment, head turned to the phone, the screen dark, now, as the call keeps going, he adds, “thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” Matt responds, almost gallant, “I’m happy to phone-fuck you any chance I can get. But maybe next time Bev’s out I can come over and actually fuck you instead.”

“Sudden mind for propriety?” grins Will, letting his feet fall heavy off the side of the bed. “It’s never slowed you down when she’s home.”

“Man likes a little privacy sometimes, especially when he’s trying to reassure his friend that he is - contrary to whatever the assholes at the FBI think - entirely sane, has a wonderful mind and an equally incredible body, and is smarter than the whole damn building combined.”

Will chews his lip, smile warming to a blush as he curls his fingers against the edge of the bed. “Friend?”

A beat, but just the one, before Matt offers, “Boyfriend?”

“Better.”

Matt chuckles, dropping back into the couch with an audible flump. “So this job isn’t for you right now. Doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future, doesn’t mean there’s not plenty of other things you’ll end up doing in the meantime,” he murmurs, voice softer now that he’s eased his own body’s demands, now that both are so entirely sated. “There’s a whole government full of offices that would love to have you in them. Investigation departments. Police departments. The whole city, the whole world beyond that, blah blah blah. Don’t let a dumb fuckin’ test or the two-bit shrink they brought in for the afternoon convince you that you’re anything less than brilliant.”

A pause.

“Or that anyone in the world gives better head than you.”

“Matt.”

“I will fight them on that last one.”

Will laughs, presses his fingers to his eyes and crosses his ankles in front of himself. It’s easier, he realizes, to breathe, with both Bev and Matt reminding him that he’s okay. People who see him day in and day out, know him more than just a face in a classroom. It means much more, he supposes, to have them believe in his sanity than someone he has never met and most likely never will again.

“When is your last final?” he asks, waits for the usual hum suggesting Matt’s about to mince the facts, and Will finds he doesn’t care.

“Sometime,” Matt replies, and Will imagines he’s gesturing into the air with his hands, so expressive, just like the rest of him. He smiles wider.

“Come over?”

“Finally. Like pulling fucking teeth with you, I thought you’d never ask.” Matt sighs, and Will hears him get up, hears his feet click against the floor of the kitchen as he meanders through it again.

“I’ll wait for you, to shower,” Will tells him, pushing himself, finally, to stand as well.

“You fucking better.”

The dial tone comes expected and Will’s grin melts to something softer, warmer. He stretches, arms up over his head with a groan, before he drops them and makes his way to the kitchen again, aiming for the forbidden brownies.

Upon them, amusingly, he finds a note.

_I had to convince myself that my wallet was the most important wallet in the world, I hope I never walk in on you sounding so damn gone again, Jesus. Eat the fucking brownie, you’ll be hungry after that. And because I know you’ll have Matt over to cuddle, I specifically made extra. Nerds. Two each, don’t be greedy._

_Bev_

Will feels his face heating, jaw slack in shock wondering when Bev had come in and what the hell she had heard. But he finds, in the end, that there is something remarkably pleasing in eating a brownie over his own hand, leaning against the counter in his messy boxers waiting for his boyfriend to come over for a shower and a night together.

He supposes he can be happy with that.


End file.
